Gnawing the Bone

Fleegle sniffs the base of a shrub, lifts his leg on it, then sniffs a nearby dog dropping and lifts, followed by pawing at the dirt, more sniffing and leg lifting. He claims he’s tracking a new girl dog in the neighborhood, but I’ve yet to see her and for me seeing is believing, not sniffing.

“You’re looking for love in all the wrong places, Fleegle,” I say as we continue our walk in the neighborhood.

“How would you know with that tiny nose of yours? She’s been through here recently, I can smell her. I bet she’s pretty.”

I point at the ground where he just sniffed. “You can tell she’s pretty from dirt?”

“I can tell she eats well, but she has a hanger on that follows her around and tries to cover up her scent with his own. Well, I’m taking care of that.” He lifts his leg on another spot, then he catches scent of something and starts pulling me by the leash down the block. “Hurry up, Raud, move those skinny legs of yours.”

We rush down the block ten yards, then he stops to sniff, then we rush down the block some more and he stops to sniff again. Our entire walk is like this, rush, stop and sniff, rush some more.

When we get back to the house, I ask, “Could that ‘hanger on’ be you from yesterday? Could you be going around peeing on her scent, then going around again today and peeing on your own scent from yesterday thinking it belongs to the ‘hanger on’?”

“No way, that’s crazy thinking,” he says, but I can tell the idea disturbs him when he pees on a nearby rock and says, “Now that’ll be tomorrow’s control scent. Remind me to give it a good sniff before we head out on our walk.”

I hide the spare house key under the rock he just peed on. “Sure thing, Fleegle.”

“Whoever that hanger on is, he sure eats a lot of pizza,” Fleegle says as we go inside.

“Are you absolutely sure it’s not you?” I ask one last time.

He looks at me like I’m up to something. “It could be you. You eat a lot of pizza, far more than me since you eat the center and I only get the skinny edge,” he says. “Have you gone all environmental and stopped peeing in your water bowl and started going outside like a normal animal?”

 

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“Ooo, Raud, are you drawing again?” Fleegle asks, breathing over my shoulder.

“Yep.”

“What is that? It looks like my dog door.”

“It’s a square.” I add a few more lines and turn it into a cube. “Now it’s a block.”

“Oh, you have writer’s block again, huh?”

I nod.

“You should use that big pink eraser you’ve got there and erase that block, then draw me another big meaty bone.”

 

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“Ooo, this is good tasting grass,” Fleegle says between bites as he grazes on the fresh spring growth. After he’s had his fill, he lifts his leg on the nearest upright object, a rhododendron shrub, and takes one of the longest pees ever.

“Fleegle, haven’t you peed on that rhodie enough? You’re going to kill it if you don’t spread your wiz around.”

“Hey, I’m writing a poem. It may not be the best poem ever, but it’s not that bad.”

“And what’s your poem about?”

“It’s a love poem to grass. In my next life I want to be born a cow. I’ll stand around all day and do nothing but graze in the fields.”

 

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